The First Minots Ledge Lighthouse

The demise of the first tower built to mark the hazardous Minots Ledge offCohasset, Massachusetts, is one of the most dramatic episodes in lighthouse history. Standing on a pile foundation, a relatively new construction technique at that time, the tower succumbed to a gale within 16 months of completion. Two assistant keepers perished. Although the event has been well documented in the past, primary source material recently uncovered by the author in the National Archives, expands and enriches our understanding of this tragic event. When construction of the first tower was being considered in 1845, Alexander Parris, a noted architect and engineer who constructed many granite towers in New England, was asked by Stephen Pleasonton, Fifth Auditor of the U.S. Treasury and Administrator of the Lighthouse Establishment, to make a survey of Minot's Ledge or Cohasset Rocks, as well as "to make a Plan and Estimate of the expense of erecting a substantial Light House of stone."